Wobbly Polygons

Tested on humans since 1997. The Platinum range: friend of the cash-strapped, though not always that popular now with collectors. 📖:PLAY March/April 1998

"... All that stands between you and certain death is an antique camera..." Now this is a cool and clever ad for Project Zero aka Zero/Fatal Frame.

Demo 1 in 1997 asks what species of fish and associated watery invertebrate best represent Gran Turismo, MediEvil, Kula World, and Tekken 3.

What do you get if you combine dodgeball with arena brawling and Treasure silliness? You get RAKUGAKI SHOWTIME; a wild-and-wonderful Japanese-only game for the PSX with a distinct papercraft and crayon aesthetic. It's SO much fun.

Though it would be bettered by its sequel two years later, 2002's Spider-Man from Treyarch gave fans a taste of web-swinging on a scale not seen before. The PS2 version is still impressive looking today.

"Get Away from Her, you BITCH!" 🔥

Almost two years earlier (Dec 1993/Jan 1994) than the release of the PlayStation in the US 30 years ago today: EGM's first unveiling of some juicy snippets of the Sony PS-X following its official announcement in Japan.

The PlayStation Can Produce Mind-Boggling Amounts of Bouncing Metal Frogs. 📺: PlayStation Developer's Demo Disc, 1995, given with preorders.

Damp and dreary outside, going to cosy up with the first disc I ever put in a PlayStation.

Fancy a drive on wobbly polygon highways this Saturday? Grab a truck and then go wild decorating it once you have the coin in your pocket, all while hurling insults at your rival in an effort to take them down. 📺: Bakusou Dekotora Densetsu: Art Truck Battle, 1998

Memory card and console stickers 💜 We've got a few Japanese import games that included them. They're things I remember mainly appearing as magazine freebies here in the UK, and usually a lot less cutesy.

The ASCII Connection - For RPG lovers everywhere. 💜 Marketed primarily for playing RPGs, the ASCII Grip also has accessibility benefits.

Official Peripherals on Parade. That delicious Cherry Red memory card <3 And I have the black, white, and smoke grey controllers. Always feels a little weird having non-Dual Shock pads in different colours other than the grey.

Death by Stereo has been rattling around my head for not far off thirty years now. Originally an Acorn Archimedes game, then 3DO, then finally to PO, PS1, and Saturn. 📺: Star Fighter/Star Fighter 3000, Fednet Software, 1996 (PS1 version)

Just a lil' fox on a lil' adventure. 🦊⚔️ Psynosis's charming Zelda-alike ARPG adventure starring a kingdom of anthropomorphic animals who all talk like Animal Crossing characters. Which only makes them even cuter to interact with!

From the GamesMaster magazine Xmas 1997 VHS special: some sweet looking back at the hits of the year and those still to come in '98. 🔥 Soul food for the PSX-loving heart. <3

May 1996's GameFan - sizzling with excitement as Squaresoft and Sony's firming relationship promises to bear a bumper crop of fruit. Twenty games on the way!

"Nine planets. One sun. Hunger, poverty, decay. We turned on one another... This was the world I was born into." One of the best intros of its era. 📺: Colony Wars: Vengeance, Psygnosis, 1998

"Square's Sexy New RPG/Thriller Reviewed Inside" 🔥 They award Parasite Eve 4/5, with the cons being no puzzles and poor animation.

Cool sci-fi locations, cool mix of psionic powers and weapons, and cheesy live-action cutscenes? This all blended together into the reason why Insomniac Games' Disruptor was one of my favourite FPS games.

Breezy Sunday afternoon PS1 Euro demo disc vibes. Tune in, space out.

Apache helicopters on the wobbly polygon horizon - GUNSHIP! An earlier release for PSX, Gunship is a solid and full-featured port of Gunship 2000 for Amiga and DOS (with a bit of the CD32 version thrown in) that swaps filled polygon battlefields for texture-mapped ones.

Where did you go for some space combat action on the early PlayStation? You went to Starblade Alpha, a March '95 remake of the 1991 Namco arcade game. Strap yourself in as a gunner FX-01 Geosword and save the galaxy!

The Wobbly Polyon Airforce on Parade ✈️ 📺: Ace Combat 2, Nanco, 1997

What a cute little welcoming bit of CRT+PS2 pixel art <3 The landing page for a Neocities site I've just been having a poke around in. cosmic-kiko.neocities.org

"Final Fantasy VII is hundreds of levels long." - GAME, 1997. It's quite cute to see them still describing games like this to emphasise just how big it is.

Happy 25th birthday, Final Fantasy IX <3 Still my favourite of the PS1 Final Fantasy games.

Blistering speed and Y2K cyber-vibes in an early racing game for PS2 and third in its series. 📺: Extreme-G3/XGIII: Extreme G Racing, Acclaim Studios Cheltenham, 2001

One of the most gorgeous PSX covers: Elemental Gearbolt.

An exploration of what was on the first PlayStation demo disc to hit the USA. Music to capture the vibe as you waited for the consoles release and some tech demo eye candy once it did.

Charitable PSX games! The Help Charity compilation, released in 1998 with proceeds going to children's charities, bundled together a few disparate games from 1996. These days, it's a cheap way of picking up Myst and Broken Sword for PS1 - the first versions of them I played.

The key to the magic kingdom. Even though I haven't followed Kingdom Hearts past the second game, the first game is such powerful nostalgia. <3

14 seconds of pure awesomeness and anticipation with the Konami logo that has the most nostalgic punch to it for me. <3

Preview '99 - the upcoming stars of the last year of the old millennium, as drawn by Marvel and Dark Horse comics artist Art Adams for a banger PSM cover. 💜

"Let's Go Online!" - The Starter Kit! Imagining a PC-98 and Net Yaroze next to one another makes me shiver. 🥵

"If you don't lose your head, someone else might..." A grisly ad for a game with, admittedly, copious amounts of gushing pixel blood - Vandal Hearts!

September 30th, 1995. The PlayStation is out in the UK! Across the country, bleary-eyed folks fresh out of bed tapped into Teletext and Digitiser the next morning, greeted by Violet Berlin and their appraisal of Sony's new wonderbox.

Take me down to Racing Lagoon City, where the streets wobble and the polygons are pretty 🎶 The joy of driving around a wee isometric Yokohama as the millennium turns. 📺: Racing Lagoon, Square, 1999

RSOD - though thankfully just a wipe of the disc needed. Still spooky tho!

Come fly with me, let's fly away 🎶 Namco takes their nascent arcade flight series to new heights in '97.

Rebus, aka Legend of Kartia, aka Kartia: Word of Fate, aka the non-Final Fantasy game from Atlus that Yoshitaka Amano did character artwork and illustrations for during a time when he was exclusively doing them for SquareSoft.

C'mon, get your body movin' to the beat 🎶 The arcade dancing sensation made its way to the PSX to get your dancing fingers and feet movin' and groovin' 📺: Dance Dance Revolution, Bemani/Konami, 1999